Sean Considine shrugged off his first two NFL concussions. Not his third.

“This one caught my attention,” Considine said. “For 10 days, I felt like I was sick.”

Considine was worried. But not for his health. For his career.

“It was at the end of training camp when cuts were being made,” said Considine, a Baltimore Ravens safety and special teams player from Byron.

Considine said he “was always taught to be tough and play through injuries” but now treats concussions differently. He told his wife he might even retire if he gets another one.

“I don’t know what the significance of having another concussion would mean for my life for the next 20 years,” he said. “No one knows.”

Considine’s reaction to football concussions — more aware and worried, but

still not overly concerned — mirrors the reaction of most players, parents and fans in the Rock River Valley. Participation at all levels of football remains high even after a year of saturation news coverage about concussions.

“Football isn’t more dangerous than a lot of other sports,” said Tiffany Redmond, who was preparing to watch her grandson play in a junior tackle game. “Football isn’t more dangerous than a lot of other sports that are out there.

“America is proud of football. It’s a family sport. Everybody gets into it. Women get into it more than other sports. It’s the American way.”

Jennifer Fuller had no fear about her 11-year-old son, Adrian, playing junior tackle, even though her 15-year-old stepson, Jesus, has sustained two concussions, one in football, the other in soccer.

“You are aware of what can happen,” Fuller said, “but that’s what they want to do. You just take your chances.”

Future parents feel the same.

“A football is still the first thing he’ll have in his hands,” Northern Illinois University runningback Akeem Daniels said, looking ahead to the day when he has a son.

But that doesn’t mean people aren’t concerned.

“I’m aware of it, and it worries me a little,” Daniels said. “But I don’t let it get to me to where it stops me from playing the way I know I can.”

Always risks

It did stop Auburn coach Dan Appino.

But not by his choice.

Appino, who turned Auburn from a team that lost 35 consecutive games into a playoff team this year and led Boylan to state titles the previous two years, often is approached by people who say they shared a class with him at Rock Valley College.

Page 2 of 5 -
He has to take their word for it.

“People come up to me all the time that I met at RVC, but I have no memory of that,” said Appino, who suffered three concussions as an RVC linebacker.

“I was one of those guys that used to lead with the head, trying to put the helmet on the ball. That’s the way I was taught. It wound up knocking me out of football. I was blacking out in classes and having short-term memory loss.”

Yet Appino never thought about quitting. His mom and dad made that choice.

“It was scarier for my parents,” Appino said. “It wasn’t that much different for me, but my parents were really adamant that I give up the game.”

Appino played long before everyone worried about concussions in football. But the sport has always carried an element of danger. And even those who have seen the worst dangers up close have seldom been deterred from playing a game they loved.

Kurt Steger started in the Big Ten for three years as a quarterback at Illinois in the 1970s even though his brother Gary had broken his neck playing football as a senior at Mundelein in 1968. Gary Steger, who died in 2003, spent the rest of his life as a paraplegic.

Yet Kurt Steger kept playing football. So did Gary’s twin, Kevin, who played tight end at New Mexico State. And Mark Steger played quarterback at Cornell College in Iowa and is now a high school offensive coordinator.

So what did the rest of the family think when football left Gary crippled?

“The way we looked at it, he missed all that. He missed playing football,” Kurt Steger said. “He was probably the best athlete of all of us.”

Gary’s injury did not make Kurt Steger fear for his own safety. Or even for his son’s when Kane Steger decided to play football at Belvidere three years ago.

“If you go out there with worries, you are not giving it 100 percent, and when you are not giving it 100 percent, that’s when you get hurt,” Kurt Steger said.

Better form

You also get hurt when you lower your head.

That’s how Dan Appino suffered his concussions.

And that’s how Gary Steger broke his neck playing safety.

Because it wasn’t enough to tackle well. Football defenders want to hit and hit hard.

“That’s how my brother got hurt,” Kurt Steger said. “He was running toward the sideline and all he had to do was push the guy out of bounds, but he wanted to stick him. He hit him with his head and couldn’t get up.”

Page 3 of 5 -
Players today are taught better ways to force fumbles.

“They used to teach tackling low,” Appino said. “Now everyone tries to teach eyes up, feet underneath you and shoot with your hands. You strike with your chest and shoulders as opposed to the crown of your helmet. And they teach punching the ball from underneath to create fumbles or ripping from the top. No one is teaching the helmet on the football anymore.”

“I have to remember to keep my head up,” Steger said. “What happened to my uncle is in the back of my mind, no matter what. It scares me sometimes, I just remember how the coaches teach me to tackle.”

“You can’t lead with your head anymore,” agreed NIU linebacker Victor Jacques. “You have to have proper form and take stress off your head. Rather than going out there and being crazy and spearheading people, it makes you want to do it right, so you can go out and play the next week.”

Doing it right doesn’t make you immune.

Jefferson running back Garett Perry, who ran for 1,505 yards this year, said his mom “clenches up” every time he gets tackled.

Coaches cringe, too. Fourteen of the 15 highest-passing games in NIC-10 history have been played in the past five years, and Hononegah coach Tim Sughroue said much of “the offensive explosion” is the result of poor tackling.

“People say it’s the spread offense, but we’re also not hitting in practice the way we used to,” Sughroue said. “We’ve scaled down the amount of collisions we have in practice. Even in youth football now, kids can only hit for so many minutes a week.”

Yet players still get concussions. Hononegah recorded more than 30 during the 2011 football season. The Indians averaged about two concussions per season in volleyball, soccer, wrestling and other sports, Hononegah trainer Beth Pouk said.

Pouk said any Hononegah player who suffers a concussion must sit out at least a week. They have to pass a base-line test and be free of all symptoms just to return to practice.

Pouk, who works for North Pointe Health and Wellness and is outsourced to Hononegah, said the worst concussion she’s seen in more than 30 years as a trainer occurred when a goalie was kicked in the head at a Division III college soccer game. She won’t let her 14-year-old son play football after he suffered three concussions — two were in hockey, none in football.

“One was just because he grew four inches in one year and tripped over his own feet and face planted,” Pouk said. “That was actually his worst one.”

Page 4 of 5 -
She pulled her son out of both hockey and football after that. She can’t protect her son from trips and falls, but she can guard against collision sports.

“We can replace ankles. We can replace knees. We can replace hips. But we can’t replace the brain,” Pouk said.

“The one thing I don’t mess with is the brain.”

And you don’t have to hit your head to injure that brain.

“Even if they land hard on their derriere, they can get a concussion,” Pouk said. “A concussion is any shaking of the brain, and the brain is free floating in fluid in the skull.”

Pouk said any hard tackle, even if no one touches the head, could be like “shaken-baby syndrome.”

Better helmets

So better tackling form is only a start in stopping concussions. The other major battle front involves helmets.

Virginia Tech conducted a study last year of the seven most popular helmets made by three companies. The most popular helmet was the second-worst. Riddell told teams to stop using its best-selling model and offered teams a discount on their newest model if they traded in 15 old helmets.

Hononegah traded in 30 of those Riddell VSR4 helmets and switched to the top-rated, but expensive, Riddell Speed and highly rated Riddell Revolution models and has seen concussions cut almost in half.

“Companies have been doing a lot more technologically with the design of their helmets,” Pouk said.

The new development that most intrigues Appino is The Guardian, a cover that protects the helmet with 37 gel-filled pouches to protect against concussions.

“They are slip-on covers that cost about 60 bucks a helmet,” Appino said. “Some states are making them mandatory in practice. I wish I had enough money to buy a freshman’s level of it to see if it cuts down on the number of concussive blows we have in practice.”

Pittsburgh Steelers All-Pro linebacker James Harrison, who has had “double-digit” concussions, praises a new helmet with CRT padding by Unequal Technologies, The padding includes a layer of Kevlar, used in bulletproof vests.

Some, though, see a downside even in better helmets.

“If they really want to solve the concussion problems,” said Considine, who led Byron to its only state title in 1999, “the best thing to do is take the helmets off. Guys wouldn’t be hitting with their heads.”

Changing the game

Great helmets, bad helmets or no helmets, there always will be concussive blows as long as there are collisions in football.

The NFL tried to reduce injuries on kickoffs last year by moving the kickoff line up five yards to the 35. Concussions on kickoffs dropped from 35 to 20, but overall concussions remained about the same (only four fewer, at 266) and there were 32 percent fewer kickoff returns (1,375, down from 2,033).

Page 5 of 5 -
“The rule changes keep coming,” Auburn quarterback Marc Trautmann said. “Hopefully, that stops. You don’t want to ruin the physicality of the game. Kickoffs are one of the most exciting parts of football.”

Trautmann knows the concussion issue better than most players. His dad is a doctor. And Marc missed most of two games with a concussion this past season. But, again, even a doctor’s son didn’t make that choice himself.

“I was trying to get back on the field the same day, but the trainers held me out,” Trautmann said. “I guess it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Considine said no one even talked about head injuries when his dad, Rick Considine, played on NIU’s 1983 California Bowl team.

Now everyone knows the risks.

Considine, an Academic All-American at Iowa, said he has done his “own research on this whole deal.” He compared the dangers of playing football to parents who buy their 16-year-old a car — a risk that almost always will be outweighed by the reward.

As long as all the risks are carefully weighed.

“Everyone has to get on board and understand what a concussion is,” said Considine, now in his eighth NFL season. “And if you do have a concussion, whether you are a 12-year-old playing junior tackle or in the NFL, you need to sit out.

“This issue has really snowballed in the last year and I’ve been disappointed that somebody from the NFL hasn’t done a better job taking a lead on this issue. If this doesn’t get treated the right way and we just let the media run with it, they are going to spend a lot of time talking about the terrible circumstances some people have, It’s not going to be good for the game.

“I am concerned,” Considine continued, “but I’m not to the point where I think anybody should ever hesitate to let your kid play football. It’s the greatest sport ever invented. For the long-term good for everybody, let’s figure out what’s going on and keep playing football.”